The keys parking:lane=* and parking:condition=* define whether or not the highways themselves have parking, on which sides, and with which conditions. For parking in designated areas, please see Tag:amenity=parking.

Describing highway parking comes down to two different properties:

If one is allowed to park, how is one supposed to place his or her vehicle when parking?

Under what conditions one may or may not park there?

To this end, we use two tags. A prohibition to park, or a prohibition to stop excludes any parking, so we can have the vehicle orientation and the aforementioned cases as values of one tag. If parking is allowed, we then have to use some other key to describe the conditions for parking.

It should not be required or even encouraged that the ways would be split for short implicit parking prohibitions; that is just before and after a junction or a driveway.

Specifying the parking space

The parking:lane tag is used to describe the "physical" properties of the road. This means space properties.

The left and right hand side are differentiated by having either only a parking:lane tag appended either only :both or a combination of parking:lane tags appended with :left or :right. It is intentional to use left and right instead of forward and backward, because parking space is about location, not direction. E.g., a one-way has sometimes parking space at the left and at the right hand side, but no "backward" parking. See Forward & backward, left & right.

perpendicular: they must park at a straight angle, i.e. the front or back of the vehicle pointing straight towards the road center line.

marked: there are only some parking spaces available that are individually marked.

no_parking: no regular road user is allowed to park on the road. They may stop, though, to for example pick up/drop off a passenger, unload cargo or for other reasons as laid out in the local legislation.

no_stopping: no regular road user is allowed to stop their vehicle, except when traffic conditions require him to do so.

fire_lane: in countries where such exist, an extra sign indicating a lane that must be kept clear for possible fire engines, or other emergency vehicles: in a sense equal to, but stricter than a no_stopping.

Please note that the latter three are considered "physical" tags, this means: parking is not possible, so no parking:condition tag (see below) is required in those cases.

Vehicle position

Sometimes the parking on the street is allowed at the edge of the driving lane, at other times there is a painted, dedicated strip at the edge of the road, and sometimes one must park on the high side of the kerb stone. To record this, use

Replace both with the side of the road you're describing, when applicable. Replace also parallel with diagonal or perpendicular when applicable.

Known values are:

on_street

half_on_kerb

on_kerb

lay_by

painted_area_only

Examples

parking:lane:both=parallel — both on the left and right hand side parallel parking is possible.

parking:lane:right=perpendicular — on the right hand side you can park perpendicularly.

parking:lane:both=marked — there are only some parking spaces available that are individually marked.

parking:lane:left=fire_lane — stopping is not possible on the left hand side due to fire considerations. (Normally there will be a sign for this.)

Possible enhancements

Specifying the maximum capacity for a given stretch of parking (especially for parking:lane:side=perpendicular)

parking:lane:right:capacity=9

parking:lane:right:capacity:disabled=2

Specifying the parking conditions (terms)

The parking:condition tag describes the legal properties of the parking space. The left- and right-hand side are specified by either a combination of tags appended with :left, :right, or a single tag appended with :both.

Depending on the condition, some additional information needs to be given:

free: No additional information is required.

ticket: To be discussed. Maybe add a parking:condition:side:fee_per_hour=1 € tag

disc: Add a parking:condition:side:maxstay=2 h tag. This means you may park here for upto 2 hours.

residents: Add a parking:condition:side:residents=A tag. This means "parking only for residents with permission A" (With A being the identification of the permission).

customers: No additional information is required. This means you are only allowed to park here if you are a customer of the shop that owns this parking space (or a visitor of a site, or a guest of a hotel, or similar).

private: No additional information is required. This means you are only allowed to park here if you rented the parking space (or have a permission of the owner).

to mean that regardless of the condition ticket residents are free to park.

Specifying time intervals (optional)

In many occasions, parking conditions are time limited. This can be specified by using the following tag: parking:condition:side:time_interval=interval. interval specifies both sets of weekdays and times, plus it can be multiplied. It uses the same syntax for values as opening_hours.

The format is complicated to define technically, but easy to understand by examples:

In this example, we couldn't use plain parking:lane:right=no_stopping, as parking is allowed at some times of the day.

Specifying maximum stay limits (optional)

Please use parking:condition:side:maxstay to specify maximum stay limits. Use it consistently with the format described here. This tag is applicable especially for disc parking.

Current progress

Kay D 11:49, 14 February 2010 (UTC): I managed to set up ProstgreSQL and Mapnik. A quick stylesheet hack that displays parking:lane:sideparallel in green, no_parking in dark-yellow and no_stopping in orange.

Examples

Using with JOSM

There a simple tagging preset and a style file for JOSM editor available. You can activate them in Preferences > Map settings.

How to activate the style

JOSM map display (MapPaint) is now able to to show direction dependent styles, so it shows the parking lanes and conditions for each side of the way. The colours shown in JOSM match the ones on the parking map.